Given that blacks are 12.6% of US population, and whites are 72.4% of US population, the population ratio is .174 to 1 black to white.

If the interracial murder rates were the same for both, we would expect 115 out of the 665 murders to be murders of whites by blacks. But the number was 447, which is 388% of the expected rate by populations.

OTOH, the total number was only 447 murders of whites by blacks, which is a small number relative to the total population of the US. There were over 40,000 deaths because of car accidents in the same year.

So a rational white person should be about 100 times more afraid of being killed by a car than being killed by a black person.

Even assuming some bias in convictions, it would be hard to come up with a 388% difference like that unless it were reflecting something real.

Overall, there were about 3,000 total murders by whites and 3,000 total murders by blacks. But since there are about 5.7 times as many whites, coming up with the same total means black people are about 5.7 times more likely commit murder on average.

You need to take into account that their are more white murder targets than black in this country.

Assume that blacks and whites are (1) equally likely to be murderers, and (2) did not murder people of the same or different race with any preference. Then see how the numbers work out.

Lets say that we have 10,000 people, 85% white, and 15% black. That is 8,500 whites and 1,500 blacks. Let's say that 1 in 100 murderer one person. Then, 85 white people would murder someone and 15 black people would murder someone. Each time a black person murders, they are 85% likely to murder a white person. Each time a white person murders, they are also 85% likely to murder a white person.

So, despite the fact that there are 1500 blacks and 8500 whites, if there are no differences between the races and no racial preference in motivation, then there are an equal number of murders of whites killing blacks and blacks killing whites.

Now, lets introduce some bias in prosecution. Lets say that all black muderers are caught. Maybe 90% are caught but the 10% that are not are offset by wrongly convicted black people. And let's say that only half of white people are caught. Now you have 13 convictions of blacks killing whites and 7 convictions of whites killing blacks.

So, in this example, assuming that blacks are twice as likely to get caught as whites, there are twice as many blacks killing whites convicted as the reverse. That pretty much matches the statistics.

I made up the numbers of course, but the point of all of this is that the statistics that you linked to by themselves are pretty meaningless, and that the number of targets skew the interracial stats as much as the number of perpetrators.

You need to take into account that their are more white murder targets than black in this country.

The roughly equal total number of murders committed by white and black people does take that into account. There are equal numbers of murders (3,000 committed by each race), but 5.7 times as many white people in the population.

So you're saying black people are 5.7 times more likely to be convicted than white people, and that makes the total numbers of murders committed by each race come out equal?

And class is still a big driver in crime; given that discrimination forces many blacks into the lower rung of the socio-economic ladder, it is no wonder that there would be more opportunity and motive for crime.

There was a black kid back in November, that blew two kids away in a white Honda Civic, while he was hijacking them. He said he shot them, because they didn't look scared enough. Too bad Zimmer Man couldn't have been there to thwart him.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Zimmer Man! Able to leap negative press in a single bound, faster than a running wild rumor, able to stop a loco Motive.

There was a black kid back in November, that blew two kids away in a white Honda Civic, while he was hijacking them. He said he shot them, because they didn't look scared enough. Too bad Zimmer Man couldn't have been there to thwart him.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Zimmer Man! Able to leap negative press in a single bound, faster than a running wild rumor, able to stop a loco Motive.

That has no bearing. A senseless murder could have been committed by anyone, regardless of ethnicity, especially if the victims were not "scared enough".

Difference is Zimmerman is a vigilante. A murderous, racist, extra-legal, gun-toting freak who kills innocent children.

He'd probably have shot the two kids, but pretend they wounded him as they struggled to get away.

Patrick, I was saying that the number of blacks murdering whites would be equal to the number of whites murdering blacks if (1) blacks and whites were equally likely to commit murder and (2) neither blacks nor whites were more likely to murder someone from their own race. Their murder victims were picked randomly, so that 88% were white and 12% were black.

The flip side to that is that the # of white on white murders would be 36 times as high as the number of black on black murders, and that is way off.

Obviously, blacks spend more time with blacks and whites with whites, so those assumptions are not correct. There are also a whole lot of socioeconomic issues to complicate things.

I was just pointing out that your math on the expected # of black on white versus white on black murder is wrong.

If you are truly interested in using mathematics to convery an observation with some accuracy, please run a monte carlo simulation and see how the results turn out. What YesYNOT is suggesting is you are using unequal population samples. You need to account for the real population size of each cohert and the event frequency (murder rate) for each cohert. If there is a random distribution (no bias) of whites killing blacks and blacks killing whites, (cohert combinations) the actual kill rate combinations will be influence by the cohert's relative size. If whites kill more often than blacks, or vice versa, then the draw rate (for the combination) is also different.

Difference is Zimmerman is a vigilante. A murderous, racist, extra-legal, gun-toting freak who kills innocent children.

I am SOOO thankful our forefathers saw the results of emotional executions.
"They LOOK guilty ! So , burn em at the stake and send them to the dungeon".
How many countries utilize the "Innocent Till Proven Guilty" rule ?
I find it hard to believe the shooting was a random lunatic's act.

a car is an inanimate object. So is a gun. Both are tools. Both can be weapons. So can the fists of a 17 year old suspected prowler. And, late at night, in the dark, with the hoodie covering the head, it is very intimidating to interact with someone who is acting like, and looking like, the people you are supposed to be "watching" for as a neighborhood "watchmen". But, I'm just guessing.

negative, an operator suggested that Zimmerman remain a hapless victim. But, since Zimmerman was able to conduct his day, and life, without that operators guidance or opinions, then why would anyone think Zimmerman should follow some lone voice? The operator was sitting in a safe place and not a target of a crime wave, was not charged with the responsibility of stopping criminal activity in Zimmermans area, and is not a law officer, so his opinion means little to me, and ment less to Zimmerman. Not guessing.

The operator was sitting in a safe place and not a target of a crime wave, was not charged with the responsibility of stopping criminal activity in Zimmermans area, and is not a law officer, so his opinion means little to me, and ment less to Zimmerman. Not guessing.

Wait, I thought you agreeded that Zimmerman should be at least guilty of Manslaughter.

White, black, yellow or green justice in some form needs to be served. A complete an thorough investigation needs to be done in the Zimmerman/Martin case. The officers and their handling, the 911 operator, the people in the community, the girlfriend on the phone, the requirements of neighborhood watch. Once all the facts are in the case should be handled as any other case. Why did a gated community with problems in the past not have surveillance cameras to back up the neighborhood watch. Who's voice is really on the tape crying out for health. Did Zimmerman receive his injuries in defense of his safety or as the aggressor with a teen that chose to fight back for his safety. Who really is the victim?

We all are, these stories come up all of the damn time. And time and time again, the bleeding heart liberals and the every much accommodating NAACP ACLU and the like always turn it into a race story. When a white guy or a Hispanic guy gets the shitty end of lunatic with badge that should have never been given the job in the first place.
It's just business as usual, "well they've been trained to be cautious, the guy should have stayed in his car, he was given instructions to. He got out and the cop felt nervous and blew him away." Or beat the hell out of him. It's marshal law, cops have more liberties to trample anyones rights at anytime they see fit. They can make up rules as they go along. They can tackle you to the ground, gag you, hand cuff you, throw you in the car, bump your head on the door jamb for good measure, take you down to the station, strip you down and make you squat, and then put you in a tank with real criminals. For any reason they see fit. And even when it's a mistake the only group that has a legal ground to bitch about it are Blacks. The rest of us Sorry Fucks just have to take it up the Ass.

SO until there is a rally cry to change the way ALL Citizens are treated, the don't expect much inertia from the rest of us, for the blacks plight. We're a little busy our selves, getting our Asses handed to us, face down on the pavement with a boot to our necks. We're a little busy right, we'll get back to you.

I think one needs a lot more information to come to a far conclusion. The link provided in the original post appears to only account for 6,284 murders. The other FBI page states an "estimated 14,748 persons were murdered nationwide in 2010". Some of the other FBI tables list a total of 12,996 murders.

Either way it seems as if thousands of murders are not listed in the link in the original post, therefore one can only spread misinformation when important facts are not made clear.

I think your analysis of the data is not quite right, Patrick. Your statement "white people are much more likely to be murdered by black people in the US than vice versa" seems to disagree with what the data suggests.

I wrote a quick Python script to calculate some expectations given the FBI data you posted, and an assumed population of 308,645,538 (from the 2010 census).

This obviously does not try to address bias in conviction rates or any other imperfections in the data.

The outputs are copied and pasted below:

--
Regardless of your race:
Your odds of being murdered: 2.035333058e-05
Your odds of being murdered by a white: 9.91755223358e-06
Your odds of being murdered by a black: 9.55479395463e-06

Given you are white:
Your odds of being murdered: 1.48837903769e-05
Your odds of being murdered by a white: 1.2423290014e-05
Your odds of being murdered by a black: 1.99971574947e-06

Given you are black:
Your odds of being murdered: 6.99193961705e-05
Your odds of being murdered by a white: 5.60383395778e-06
Your odds of being murdered by a black: 6.32102188174e-05
--

So, if you are white, your odds of being murdered by a black are about 2 in one million. If you are black, your odds of being murdered by a white are about 2.8 times that, or 5.6 in one million.

If you are black, you are about 4.7 times more likely to be murdered than if you are white.

Bap, these are expectations. This analysis is valid if you are willing to draw expectations from the data, as Patrick originally did. This is done in the same manner as how the National Weather Service advertises the odds of getting struck by lightning to be 1E-6 in a given year--they do so by dividing the number of strikes per year by the total population. Does that mean those are the odds that YOU will get struck by lightning? Doubtful--I don't know how you spend your time. If you play golf on mountaintops during thunderstorms, the likelihood will be far greater than if you live inside a subterranean Faraday cage. But for large samples of a large population, that expectation can be applied with reasonably good agreement.

People DO do the same math with the NBA, NFL, and MLB; those statistics ARE part of the equation in sports management decisions (too much so for Brad Pitt, in Moneyball). Future expectations are based on prior performance, but just like with roulette, quantum mechanics, and women, there are no certainties.

Marcus, I agree with your math, but it doesn't seem to disagree with mine. Given you are white, the data suggests that the probability of being murdered by someone who is black is 2E-6 or 2/1,000,000, not 2E-5.

And this data is gathered over a year, so these are expectations that this will occur within a given year. Specifically, the data is from 2010.

1) The black population is 12% of the total population.
2) Blacks commiting murderer are >12% of the total murders.
3) Blacks murdered by blacks are >12% of the total murdered blacks.
4) Whites murdered by blacks are >12% of total murdered whites.

I'm sure the actual numbers can be used in place of "greater than 12%", but I think you see my point.

The answer to this problem is simple - just pack heat, permit or not, and be willing to use it if you are victimized - regardless of media hype and race-baiters. In the end - if is my life or some attackers - I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6....